1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a musical tone control system, a control method for the same, a program for realizing the control method, a musical tone control apparatus, and a notifying device, which control musical tone generation in a manner reflecting motion or physical posture of a user.
2. Description of the Related Art
Audio systems and other musical tone generating apparatuses can generate desired musical tones once four performance parameters of tone color, pitch, volume, and effects are determined. MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) musical instruments and other musical tone generating apparatuses perform music based on music data. Users adjust the volume and other performance parameters by knobs, buttons, etc. of the MIDI musical instruments.
As described above, in MIDI musical instruments and other musical tone generating apparatuses, the desired volume etc. are obtained by the user suitably operating knobs or other operating elements. When a user listens to music performed by a musical tone generating apparatus at a desired volume etc., the method of adjustment of the performance parameters by control knobs is effective. In the conventional musical tone generating apparatuses, however, while it is possible to provide the user with faithful performance or reproduction of music based on music data, it is not possible to provide the user with the pleasure of actively participating in the reproduction of the music.
Therefore, a system may be considered in which motion sensors are attached to the body of the user, movement of the body of the user is detected by these sensors, and music is played based on the results of the detection. By using such a system, it is possible to control the performance of music based on MIDI data etc. in accordance with motion of the user rather than having the user dance or otherwise move in accordance with the music and to thereby provide the user with a new form of participatory musical entertainment.
In such a system detecting motion of the user and performing music based on music data in accordance with the results of detection, however, sometimes the performance of music was obstructed when the user stopped moving his or her body due to fatigue or the like. For example, MIDI data is data for generating musical tones by note-on-event data and stopping the generation of musical tones by note-off-event data. Therefore, when controlling the performance of music by sequentially executing events in accordance with MIDI event data corresponding to motion of the operator, the note-off-event data of the MIDI data is not output when the user stops moving in the middle of the music and therefore musical tones generated by note-on-event data of a certain pitch are continuously output as they are. To prevent the problem of musical tones being thus continuously output even after the user stops moving, it may be considered to perform control so as to automatically stop generation of all musical tones at the point of time when the user stops moving, thereby stopping the reproduction of the music. When the music played includes a portion where a beat timing motion is stopped in the middle or end of the music as expressed by a “fermata” mark, however, regardless of the user deliberately stopping motion in order to control the performance of the music, all musical tones are automatically suddenly stopped and the reproduction of music is terminated, i.e., control unintended by the user is performed.